And, third, he argued against freedom of speech because much of his rhetoric assumed that any discussion of the ideas underlying communism was dangerous and un-American. The U. McCarthyism was a term coined to describe activities associated with Republican senator Joseph R.
McCarthy of Wisconsin. He served in the Senate from to In the American political lexicon, the term has its origin in a March , Washington Post editorial cartoon by Herbert Block, who depicted the four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant to stand on a teetering stack of 10 tar buckets. The term McCarthyism soon evolved to describe the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them.
The practice held sway between and , a period of intense suspicion during which the U. As evidenced by congressional passage of the Subversive Activities Control Act of , which made up Title 1 of the Internal Security Act of also called the McCarran Act , a majority of Congress also shared the belief that CPUSA constituted an active conspiracy that was secretive and loyal to a foreign power and dedicated to the clandestine infiltration of U.
Foster, and ten others for advocating the violent overthrow of the U. Although most scholars consider McCarthyism to be an outgrowth of the Palmer raids and the red scare of the s and the Smith Act of , which made it illegal to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the U.
Joseph McCarthy. During his 10 years in the Senate, McCarthy and his staff gained notoriety for making outlandish accusations that, though initially directed to government employees, would later include Americans from all walks of life. Because he systematically engaged in the practice of public accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with little regard for evidence and the use of unfair investigatory methods, Senator McCarthy would later himself be accused of victimizing those who appeared before his committee and suppressing basic civil rights and liberties.
Truman's "loyalty program," more than two years before Senator Joseph McCarthy made his first publicized allegations of widespread Communist infiltration of the American government in early It originated with President Truman's Executive Order of March 21, , which required that all federal civil service employees be screened for "loyalty. Although officially the only purpose of AGLOSO was to provide guidance for federal civil service loyalty determinations, AGLOSO, once published, was quickly adopted by a wide variety of public and private groups, including state and local governments, the military, defense contractors, hotels, the Treasury Department in making tax-exemption determinations , and the State Department in making passport and deportation decisions , to deny employment or otherwise discriminate against listed organizations or persons alleged to be affiliated with them.
As various scholars wrote contemporaneously and subsequently, AGLOSO, which was massively publicized in the media, became what amounted to "an official black list. The influence of the list could be very far-reaching. For example, the November issue of Elks Magazine carried an article entitled "What the Attorney General's List Means," which began by accurately noting that "there are few Americans who have not heard of 'the Attorney General's subversive list'" and concluded by declaring, "There is no excuse for any American citizen becoming affiliated with a group on the Attorney General's list today.
Although AGLOSO itself was massively publicized, the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government released little or no information about key aspects of the list, including how it was compiled, what criteria were used to list groups, why the decision was made to publish the list, and why listed organizations were not provided with any notice, charges, or hearings before they were designated.
Moreover, when AGLOSO was first published in late , only the briefest of references were made to the fact that the government had been maintaining in secret an AGLOSO to aid in screening federal employees for loyalty ever since The publication of the list transformed what was supposedly a tool solely designed to help screen federal employees for loyalty into what effectively became an official government proscription blacklist, whose influence spread across American society, severely damaged or destroyed the listed organizations, and cast a general pall over freedom of association and speech in the United States.
This article seeks to flesh out how the Truman administration AGLOSO was "made," drawing upon previously unreleased governmental records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act as well as upon other available sources, such as obscure congressional hearings.
The original legal basis for this list was the August Hatch Act, which banned from government employment any person who held "membership in any political party or organization which advocated the overthrow of our constitutional form of government in the United States.
Pursuant to these congressional mandates, Attorney General Francis Biddle created a temporary interdepartmental committee to investigate alleged subversion within the federal government. Biddle and the Dickinson Committee named for Special Assistant to the Attorney General Edwin Dickinson , which he created in early , designated 47 organizations by May as falling within the Hatch Act criteria, membership in which raised a "flag" with regard to federal employees or applicants for federal jobs.
This first AGLOSO was compiled in secret, and the listed organizations were not informed or given any opportunity to challenge the listings. Without naming the organizations, beyond the Communist Party CP and the pro-Nazi German American Bund, whose inclusion under the Hatch Act mandate had been previously announced by the Civil Service Commission CSC , the FBI document reported that the Dickinson Committee had designated 47 organizations as coming "within the purview" of the congressional mandates, including "12 Communist or Communist 'front' organizations; 2 American Fascist organizations; 8 Nazi organizations; 4 Italian fascist organizations; and 21 Japanese organizations.
The major national news media barely mentioned the Biddle AGLOSO, however, and even after Chairman Martin Dies of the House Committee on Un-American Activities placed leaked Justice Department memorandums concerning the designated Communist "front" organizations into the Congressional Record on September 24, , the names of the groups were not reported in the mainstream press. Therefore, although the Justice Department, in publishing the first Truman AGLOSO in December noted that 47 of the approximately 90 organizations on its list had been previously designated by the Roosevelt administration as "subversive" for "use in connection with consideration of employee loyalty," most Americans were probably completely unaware that the federal government had previously been using such listing.
In October the Gaston Committee named for Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Herbert Gaston and created in early to replace the Dickinson Committee recommended that it be abolished and its functions turned over to the U. Civil Service Commission. In December the new attorney general, Tom Clark, drafted a proposed executive order to implement this recommendation. However, the rapid development of Cold War tensions after and concerns about possible Communist infiltration of the government soon created a drastically changed political climate in the United States.
President Truman in late appointed yet another commission to study governmental employee loyalty, which eventually led him to inaugurate a sweeping new federal loyalty program in March The rapid, major deterioration in the civil liberties climate and the reemergence of the "subversives in government" issue that marked the period between the end of World War II and early was largely attributable to four intertwined and reinforcing factors that, due to space considerations and their extensive treatment in scholarly literature elsewhere, can only be briefly listed here:.
Amid the growing domestic and international anxieties of the congressional election year, the House Un-American Activities Committee HUAC , now a permanent committee, investigated several alleged Communist "front" groups.
A House Civil Service Committee HCSC subcommittee concluded, after brief mid hearings, that American security was threatened by the federal employment of persons of "questioned loyalty" and that a government commission was immediately required to establish a "complete and uniform" program to protect the government against "individuals whose primary loyalty is to governments other than our own. During closed July hearings, CSC head Arthur Flemming told the HCSC subcommittee that, in the light of congressional passage of the Hatch Act and other legislation, the CSC had "no difficulty" in determining that Communist Party members or followers of the party "line," along with "persons actively associated with groups or organizations whose primary loyalty was to Nazi, Fascist or Japanese governments," should be barred from federal employment.
When McCarthyism was in full force, Parker was at the apex of her writing career. With her name on the blacklist, she was still able to get work but sensed her services were not in high demand. Do I look to you like someone who could overthrow the government? Parker was in her 60s when the FBI finally decided she wasn't a potential national security threat.
He may have been one of the most celebrated and iconic film stars of all time, but Charlie Chaplin wasn't winning any awards in the love department. Whether they be sculptors, painters, photographers, directors or illustrators, African American visual artists have made a name for themselves throughout history.
These paved the way for other female artists through their paintings, sculptures, films, photos, and illustrations. These political pioneers broke racial and gender barriers during their time as members of the House of Representatives. Barack Obama may have been the first Black president elected to the White House, but many tried before him. Learn about some of the notable people who survived or perished when the "unsinkable ship" struck an iceberg in April Explore the many ways in which Latina women have broken gender and cultural barriers.
The work of these women was overlooked during their lifetime with men receiving recognition instead. Bessie Coleman was among the African American pilots and astronauts who paved the way for others to explore the skies. In , the year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he named Joseph Goebbels , his trusted friend and colleague, to the key post of minister for public enlightenment and propaganda.
In this capacity, Goebbels was charged with presenting Hitler to Joseph Hooker was a career U. Hooker entered the Civil War in as a brigadier general and gained a reputation as a reliable combat Joffree rose to general of division in and then chief of the French general In the summer of , Joseph Plumb Martin enlisted in the Connecticut state militia at the tender age of 15; he later joined the Continental Army of General George Washington and served nearly seven years on behalf of the Revolutionary cause.
In , the year-old Martin House of Representatives, investigated allegations of communist activity in the U. Established in , the committee wielded its subpoena power as a However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one.
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